BEGIN:VCALENDAR
VERSION:2.0
PRODID:-//Lewis & Clark//NONSGML v1.0//EN
X-WR-CALNAME:Lewis & Clark Events
BEGIN:VTIMEZONE
TZID:America/Los_Angeles
BEGIN:DAYLIGHT
TZNAME:PDT
DTSTART:20100314T100000
RDATE:20100314T100000
TZOFFSETFROM:-0800
TZOFFSETTO:-0700
END:DAYLIGHT
END:VTIMEZONE
BEGIN:VTIMEZONE
TZID:America/Los_Angeles
BEGIN:STANDARD
TZNAME:PST
DTSTART:20101107T090000
RDATE:20101107T090000
TZOFFSETFROM:-0700
TZOFFSETTO:-0800
END:STANDARD
END:VTIMEZONE
BEGIN:VEVENT
DTSTART;TZID=America/Los_Angeles:20100305T153000
DTEND;TZID=America/Los_Angeles:20100305T163000
LOCATION:John R. Howard Hall 202
SUMMARY:Plato on Ignorance as a Cognitive Power by Nick Smith (Lewis &amp\; Clark College)
DESCRIPTION:\n In Book V of Plato's Republic\, Plato has Socrates distinguish between three distinct cognitive powers (dunameis): knowledge (episteme)\, opinion (doxa)\, and ignorance (agnosia). Powers\, Socrates goes on to explain\, are distinguished in virtue of what they are related to and what they accomplish (477d1). In this section of the dialogue\, the second of these two differentiae is not invoked again\; instead\, all of the distinctions Socrates makes here are made in terms of the different objects to which the powers are related. Knowledge\, we are told\, is related to what is (to on)\; ignorance is related to what is not (to me on)\; opinion is related to what both is and is not.\n\n\n Scholars have attended almost entirely to the distinction between knowledge and opinion\, and for good reason: It is clear that this distinction is the primary one that Plato wishes to explicate here\, as it is in terms of this distinction that the important difference between the philosopher rulers and ordinary rulers will be drawn. The distinctions between knowledge and ignorance and opinion and ignorance are only very briefly mentioned\, and ignorance itself remains almost wholly unexplained.\n \n In this paper\, I discuss the role of ignorance in Plato's epistemology. My analysis is novel in four ways: First\, other scholars have attended almost exclusively to the roles assigned to knowledge and opinion in this passage\, and have neglected to explain whether – and if so\, how – their analyses could explicate what Plato has Socrates say about ignorance. \; Secondly\, I argue that we should not understand the analysis as an intensional one: cognitive powers are not objects to which they are related\, as scholars have generally supposed. The relationship of the powers to objects\, rather\, is a nomological one. \; Thirdly\, I argue that what is produced by the cognitive powers are what we would call conceptualizations (or conceptions) of the entities to which they are said to be related (epi). Finally\, I argue that the case of ignorance makes clear that the "is" in Plato's analysis of the relata of each cognitive power must be understood neither veridically (where "is" means "is true")\, nor existentially (where "is" means "exists")\, but \; \; predicatively (wherewhere "is" means "is F\," where F is the name of a Platonic Form).\n \n THIS EVENT IS FREE AND OPEN TO THE PUBLIC.\n
UID:20100305T233000Z-1385@www.lclark.edu
LAST-MODIFIED:20100304T193125Z
X-LIVEWHALE-TYPE:events
X-LIVEWHALE-ID:1385
X-LIVEWHALE-TIMEZONE:America/Los_Angeles
END:VEVENT
END:VCALENDAR